A Single Memory
by Gambit Gurl Isis
Summary: It is my regrettable duty to inform you, sir, that you have passed away. From your years of experience in life, you must choose one memory. The most important memory to you. It is this memory that will allow you to pass on from this world. Nakama fic.


**AN:** Inspired by the movie 'After life'. Originally I was going to make it longer, but I like how this turned out.

"I'm certain you have already come to realize this, but it is my duty to officially inform you."

"Do what you have to," the blaze looking elderly gentleman across the table said as he leaned back and lit up a cigarette. He didn't inhale off of it, but he set it down in the ashtray and simply let it burn. He folded his ropey arms down on the table and leaned back in his chair, pushing his white, linen covered chest out.

"Thank you."

"Not an issue," the man responded as he scratched at his full, but short hair. His skin, not wrinkled with age so much as loosened by the beginning descent of years, scrunched along his forehead as he scraped his fingernails over his scalp.

"Yesterday, at approximately five fifty-seven in the evening, you died."

"That sounds about right," the man agreed with a wistful smile that held a bit of smugness behind it.

"Because you have recently died, you will remain here for one week. Accommodations, counsellings, and any aid you may require will be cheerfully provided under one sole condition."

"What's that?" He didn't sound like he was paying too much attention—his eyes wandered to the window and he smirked.

"From your forty-seven years of experience in life, you must choose one memory. The most important memory to you."

"Hm?" He looked up and his thin eyebrows creased together as a frown crossed his face—this was the expression his features seemed designed for, rather than that smile earlier.

"It is in the reliving of this one most important memory that you will be able to move on and leave this world. It is also, in this memory, that you will cross into eternity."

"Just one?"

"Yes, only one."

"Of my entire life..." the woman repeated with a heavy, yet calming sigh and folded her arms across the table. Her greying hair spilled over her shoulders and her long fingers drummed across the surface of the warm wood. "Maa, what a question."

"Surely you have one moment in your life that is most important to you?"

"Of course I have one, what a stupid question,"the pacing lady snapped and leaned back against the large window at the corner of the room. Silence hung heavily across the table, the interviewer sat, alone, waiting for her answer.

"But by most important, what do you mean?" He asked, his eyebrows dropping down from beneath the bandanna tied around his head. The scar across his face twitched slightly as he cocked it to the side and examined the wall.

"There is no exact meaning, but most people pick an event that they found most important to them in life. Something that changed the way they were forever."

"Tch, assholes. I have more than one," he growled quietly and chewed on his thumb as he patted his left pocket absently for something that was no longer present. He kicked up his feet and set them on the table, his heavy boots clunking against the wood. The interviewer said nothing against this as he shuffled his hair and threw his head back limp. The dead man's gaze drifted to the ceiling.

"I could help you choose if you like."

"Could you really?" The heavy voice that fell from the adorably child-like creature was one of wisdom.

"If it is vague, then I could help you to remember..."

"That's the problem," she smiled, the hair atop her head fell unevenly to her waist as she leaned forward and pressed her forehead into her hands. "I can see it all so clearly, that I could relive it without you."

"Please, then, tell me about it."

There was a long, heavy silence. The blonde man across the table chewed idly on an unlit cigar that hovered between his lips and periodically spat out soaked tobacco leaves. With a heavy sigh, he stood up and looked out the window, as if searching to see the events displayed outside it's thin wooden frame.

"So you became the world's greatest swordsman," the interviewer read from the page and the elderly man smirked, his three earrings jingling slightly as he leaned forward again. "Perhaps that?"

"No, it's the stupid end to another couple of dreams," the swordsman waved his hand to dismiss it.

"Oh?"

"I swore to an old friend that I would do it, back when I was a child," he explained as if it were a weather forecast. "But...now, that doesn't seem so important to my life anymore. It's finished."

"When I read that last square, it completed my dreams. So it means nothing after my life is done." She laughed and her raven eyes closed with a joyful sigh.

"It's what got me to my dreams that matters, really," the redhead snapped again and a smile fell unbidden across her annoyed features.

"And how I got there, not the actual title," he laughed—he thumbed his long nose and leaned back, puffing out his chest proudly.

"It's the journey, he taught me that," the blonde exhaled heavily and forced his thumb down from his mouth—his teeth bore a mild tobacco stain, but had obviously been whitened often in life.

"He taught me so much about how to live!" The reindeer grinned an unholy grin and laughed.

"My life wasn't ever the same after him," she said as she looked at the small 'X' tattooed on her wrist.

"So, of course, he's the one I'm going to pick," the blonde admitted with a shrug as he tossed his cigar aside and adjusted his goggles. "Just like he was the one I picked to give my life for."

"If I had to relive any moment of my life, it would be the day I met Monkey D. Luffy."


End file.
